0:01

NPR. Ah,

0:13

do you feel that Adrienne? That nip in

0:15

the air, the crispness of the fall leaves.

0:19

I can smell the pumpkin spice.

0:21

Ah, for me, fall is the

0:23

most romantic season. And since

0:26

we've all got hearts in our eyes, we

0:28

wanted to do a whole week of episodes

0:30

about the economic side of love. That's

0:32

right. We are exploring

0:34

topics from how romance novelists got

0:37

so successful to why

0:39

online dating is causing heartbreak. This

0:43

is Love Week from The Indicator

0:45

from Planet Money. I'm Adrienne Ma.

0:47

And I'm Weyland Wong. Today on

0:49

Love Week, we're unwrapping the made-for-TV

0:51

holiday rom-com and how television executives

0:54

figured out how to mass produce

0:56

seasonal romance. That's after our theme

0:58

song. Do you have a theme song? Yes.

1:01

It's by Grant Lee Phillips, who is

1:03

the town busker on Gilmore Girls, the

1:05

TV show. How about

1:08

a little romance? Watch

1:12

a rom-com holding hands?

1:15

A provocative plot? Open

1:19

the window, cause the market's hard.

1:22

It's steamy in this place.

1:26

I might have to change

1:28

to something comfortable. Love

1:30

Week is Love Week. This

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message comes from NPR sponsor

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Mustang Mach-E rally, go to

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ford.com. This

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HR services and technology,

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from payroll, benefits, and

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development. Learn more at

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insparity.com/HR Matters. It's

2:42

become kind of a national pastime to

2:44

grumble about how the holiday marketing blitz

2:46

seems to start earlier and earlier every

2:48

year. But believe it or

2:50

not, there was a time when it seemed

2:52

like there was not enough Christmas. At

2:55

least not when it came to made-for-TV

2:57

movies. Bill Abbott was CEO

3:00

of Hallmark Channel's parent company for over

3:02

a decade. And he remembers

3:04

those barren days way back in

3:06

the early 2000s. For the most

3:08

part, the TV movie space was really

3:10

only a few movies leading up to

3:12

Christmas. You know, maybe you do

3:15

five or six Christmas movies a

3:17

year. Bill says he and others

3:20

at Hallmark believed there was a

3:22

big, untapped audience for Christmas content.

3:25

People who wanted presents, snowflakes, sleigh

3:27

rides. And most importantly, they wanted

3:29

PG-rated romance. So in

3:31

2009, Hallmark

3:34

launched Countdown to Christmas,

3:36

a collection of movies that would air in the weeks

3:38

leading up to December 25th. And

3:41

Bill says things really got going a couple years

3:43

later. That's when the network aired 12 original

3:46

holiday films with titles like A

3:49

Princess for Christmas and Mistletoe Over Manhattan. Did

3:51

you pick that because it was like the

3:53

12 days of Christmas? There was a little

3:55

bit of that there. To

3:57

be candid. I

4:00

think we kind of thought, what's a good number?

4:02

And 12 kind of made sense for the business

4:04

model anyway. A key part of this business model

4:06

was frugality. Bill says they spent around $12 to

4:09

$15 million on

4:11

those dozen movies. To give you

4:13

an idea of how thin that shoestring is,

4:16

around that same time, Paramount released

4:18

a romantic comedy in theaters called

4:20

No Strings Attached, starring Natalie Portman

4:22

and Ashton Kutcher. That single rom-com

4:24

cost a reported $25 million to

4:26

make. Yeah,

4:29

Bill did not have that kind of

4:31

Hollywood budget. So there were some trade-offs

4:33

made. If you look back, there were

4:35

Christmas movies that had no snow that

4:37

were clearly in warm weather, things we

4:39

would never do now, because we didn't

4:41

have the budget to create

4:43

that overall setting and location

4:45

that we've learned is so

4:47

critical to making the viewer

4:50

become immersed in Christmas. And so

4:52

those were choices that we had

4:54

to make just due

4:56

to financial constraints. Even without

4:59

Hollywood A-listers and elaborate sets,

5:01

these movies have found both

5:03

enthusiastic viewers and advertisers. Hallmark

5:06

already kicked off Countdown to Christmas last week

5:08

and will play holiday movies 24-7 through the

5:10

season. And this year's

5:12

lineup has over 30 new films. Streaming

5:15

services like Netflix and Hulu have also

5:18

aired their own original holiday rom-coms. As

5:20

the genres expanded, so have budgets, but

5:22

a lot of the cost-saving measures from

5:24

the early days have stuck around. For

5:27

example, the movies tend to have simple

5:29

small-town settings, and they're shot quickly in

5:31

just a few weeks. We

5:33

have so many years in the business

5:36

that we don't need more than two

5:38

takes. You may recognize that voice as

5:40

Danica McKeller. She played girl next door

5:42

Winnie Cooper in the TV series, The

5:44

Wonder Years. She is also a Christmas

5:46

movie mainstay. Maybe you watched Crown for

5:49

Christmas or Coming Home for Christmas on

5:51

Hallmark. You'll see a lot of,

5:53

you know, 90s

5:55

child stars like myself in these movies,

5:57

in part because...